POLICE DOCUMENTS REVEAL FURTHER DETAILS OF PHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ABUSE BY LEV TAHOR

Quebec police started probing the Lev Tahor ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect after hearing nearly two years ago of allegations that teen-aged girls were confined in basements and married by force to older men, according to unsealed search-warrant applications.

The court documents also allege that children from other countries were brought to the Hasidic community to be married after false reasons were given in the immigration process.

Followers were kept under “psychogical control” with medications, and government money given to families was managed by the community leader, the documents say.

The documents are part of applications for search warrants from the Sûreté du Québec. They were unsealed on Friday at the request of several media outlets, including The Globe and Mail. [...]

The search-warrant filings allege a young woman said she was hit with a belt and a coat hanger and a pregnant 17-year told nurses at a hospital she was beaten by her brother, sexually abused by her father and married by force to a 30-year-old man when she was 15.

Investigators were told children had to drink water mixed with an unknown green powder and that “all kinds of pills” were bought from a pharmacy and given to people without explanation.

One man was quoted as saying someone “diagnosed with him a personality disorder and wanted him to take medications. He said that taking medications was compulsory if one disobeyed the community’s orders. He said that [blacked-out name] was beaten with a stick because she was not listening.”

Another person also told police about beatings with sticks, crowbars, whips and belts. “He was forced to take pills during meal times three times a day.”

That person said he was placed in a family he was not acquainted with when he joined the Lev Tahor. “There was nothing to eat. He had to beg. They all had to shave their hair.”

The witness said he saw a woman struck in the face because she did not want to wear the burqa-like outfit for women that has led Israeli media to call the group the Jewish Taliban.

The witness added that “no one could keep money, everything had to be handed to Shlomo,” the document said.

The Lev Tahor’s spiritual leader is Rabbi Shlomo Elbarnes, who is also known as Shlomo Helbrans.

And this repulsive man was allowed to take up residence in the Great White North. Speaking of which, he also filmed a video where he attacked the Canadian authorities, accusing them of committing "genocide" against Lev Tahor:

MONTREAL—Quebec judges, child-protection workers and politicians are waging a “genocide” campaign against Lev Tahor, the reclusive Orthodox Jewish group being targeted by multiple police and social services and investigations, the group’s spiritual leader alleges.

In a video released by the group Friday, Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans delivers an 18-minute speech to a few of the group’s followers before bundling himself into vehicle, the last of the more than 200 Lev Tahor members to leave the province of Quebec. It appears to have been recorded on Feb. 6 at about 6:30 p.m.

Helbrans says that his group, which claims to follow a purer version of Hasidic Judaism than other strains of the faith, attempted to comply with the demands of provincial education authorities and child-welfare officials, who have been waging a months-long battle with Lev Tahor over a home-schooling regime that falls far short of the Quebec curriculum and what the regional Director of Youth Protection has alleged were findings of child neglect, psychological abuse, underage marriages and poor health.

Oh yeah, that's "pure" alright. Denying oneself the necessary energy from the sun (vitamin D) to keep healthy is no way to be "pure".

Helbrans vehemently denies the allegations in the video.

Others who have had interactions with the group, lived in the community or encountered former Lev Tahor members have said the group has the characteristics of a “cult.”

“The creator knows the truth — that we have not committed in the village a single crime. We did not break any Canadian or Quebec laws,” Helbrans says.

He continues down his dark path of lies and dishonesty. He practically broke the law by abusing the children for supposed violation of his sick principles and leaving the province while refusing to comply with the ruling that the children be placed in custody of other Jewish families. He also violates the Commandment of Thou Shalt Not Use God's Name in Vain.

Quebec police recently executed search warrants against Lev Tahor homes in their former Quebec base of Ste-Agathe-des-Monts and their new compound in Chatham-Kent, Ont. Details of what the authorities are investigating are expected to be released Friday afternoon after an application by Torstar News Service and other media to view the search warrant applications.

In the video, Helbrans is holding Torah scrolls and says that Lev Tahor was pushed to flee their Quebec homes for Ontario by a vindictive and unfounded investigation.

“We were expelled from here like we were expelled from many other lands,” he says in the video, which also shows photographs of Jews being persecuted, rounded up or expelled from Lithuania, Poland, Romania during the Holocaust. “We have escaped as a last resort.”

How can they be "expelled" when they fled? But this is a man who also accuses Israel of "persecution". It's offensive how he's comparing the reasons authorities are investigating them with the Holocaust. People like Helbrans never even fought convincingly against the nazis during WW2, and what he's doing is just what the nazis would want.

Helbrans lashes out at judges in Quebec and Ontario, who have handed down repeated rulings against Lev Tahor, as well as the child-protection authorities whose three-month investigation prompted an order handed down by an Ontario judge last week that 13 of 14 children targeted by that probe should be forcibly returned to Quebec and placed in temporary foster care while undergoing physical and psychological check ups. The community was given 30 days to file a judicial appeal of that ruling, during which time the children are allowed to stay in the community.

But the community’s charismatic leader holds particular ire for Quebec Liberal leader Philippe Couillard who, without naming Lev Tahor, said last December: “To those who come here to profit from our freedoms, from our democracy, only to later attack them and ultimately destroy them, we say loud and clear: you are not welcome here and we will fight your, we will hunt you down.”

Helbrans said the message was no different than that coming out of Nazi Germany: that Quebec should be “Judenrein” or clean of Jews.

“When we see clearly that they are going against humanity, that they are persecuting innocent persons and they do not let the true facts faze them . . . what difference does it make if he is referred to as a judge or a minister or he is referred to as (Joseph) Goebbels or Mr. (Hermann) Goering,” Helbrans says, referring respectively to the head of the Nazi propaganda chief and the founder of the Gestapo and deputy to Nazi leader Adolph Hitler.

“Mr. Couillard and other band people . . . want to destroy us, to obliterate us, to make a genocide.”

And again, it's offensive - virtually obscene - how he compares wanting to save children from an abusive lifestyle to nazism. Couilliard wants to do nothing of the sort, and besides, the authorities want to move the children to the custody of other Jewish families - even Haredi ones - in the province. What's ironic is that Helbrans was allowed into the country pretty much based on his anti-Israel/Zionist stance over the past decade, and he thanks them by comparing them to the very kind of mindsets he shows no interest in opposing. Yet I get the vibe he'd never accuse an Islamic regime of the same, and unlike Canadian authorities, they'd surely allow him free reign with his cult. After all, he's taken up their customs.

Helbrans also blatantly abuses the Torah, just like God's name, to justify his repellent world view, and it's high time they put out an arrest warrant against him.